Watch: Khaled El-Rouayheb - A Discourse on Method

The science of ādāb al-baḥth or munāẓarah emerged relatively late in Islamic history. Its roots lay in the earlier science of eristic (jadal or khilāf) that had developed among early Islamic theologians and jurists (with some influence from Aristotelian topics and late-antique rhetoric). In this lecture, I will argue that there was an explosion of interest in the science in the Ottoman Empire in the seventeenth century. I will discuss the wider intellectual context of this development, as well as some of its consequences for the Ottoman tradition of logic.